


Hold Me Like a Conversation

by gloss



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Aphrodisiacs, Force-Sensitive Finn, Idfic, M/M, Multi, OTP shenanigans, Porn with Feelings, Romance, Tentacles, weird sci-fi stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-18
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-12-31 09:57:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12129990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: On a multiphase mission for the Resistance, Finn and Poe bicker and flirt, indulge in dumb identity play, stuff their faces, smoke some spice, sleep with Lando, and try to charm the king of a planet of tentacle aliens. They might also come to a better understanding of just what they mean to each other, but don't hold your breath.Id fic, make no mistake.





	Hold Me Like a Conversation

**Author's Note:**

> Huge thanks to GP, Hegemony, and Sneq for cheerleading, and to Orchis, who also provided the very best audiencing I've ever experienced. Happy 18th of the month to you. ♥
> 
> Title from Kelly Rowland, "[Motivation](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1XozsBN5Z4)".

## 1.

If the Resistance is going to survive, it needs several things. Stable funding sources and reliable matériel are hazy dreams, the kind of thing one can hope for more than actively work toward, but new storage depots and housing for refugees, now -- those can be found.

With difficulty, of course, because what isn't difficult these days.

*

"Be careful," Leia tells them before they depart. Their skiff is hovering already, just about to lift out of atmo, they've been cleared on every condition, and that's when she decides to take the comms.

"Of course," Finn replies without seeming to think about it. They're always careful, _always_. Right up until the moment they can't be.

Across the cockpit, Poe's frowning at him. 

_What?_ Finn pantomimes. 

Poe circles his hand impatiently, which tells Finn less than nothing. He mouths back another _what?_ but Poe just frowns, shaking his head.

"General?" Poe asks, "was there anything else?"

"Watch out for each other, that's all. He's a friend," she says and pauses. The crackle of static changes then, gets a little worse, as she switches to encrypted back-channel. "He's a very good friend, so don't forget that everyone knows his connection to me. Regardless, he's still _Lando_."

With that, she signs off.

Neither of them knows what that means, why she stresses their contact's name so wryly. Poe met him, briefly, at Solo's memorial service back when Finn was still out of commission. Besides a general impression of _whoa, real hot for an old guy_ , Poe doesn't recall anything about the man.

"Takes one to know one, I guess," Finn says.

"Hot?"

"Old."

"Droll, so very droll," Poe says as he double-checks that Finn's strapped in before flicking on the main thrusters. (Of course Finn is strapped in; he observes protocol superbly and to the letter. Still, Poe likes to reassure himself.) " _Older_ guy, I should have said."

"Comment stands."

"You'll be standing out the airlock if you don't watch it."

*

They have to go at subluminal speeds when skirting Republican territory. 

"Wasn't he with Mon Mothma?"

"Who, Calrissian?"

"Yeah. On Yavin, I mean."

"No, I think that's someone else." Poe glances at Finn. "You know a lot about the rebels, huh?"

"Know your enemy, see their misery, understand their frailty, blah blah," Finn says, pronouncing a quotation that Poe's never heard before. Finn must catch something in Poe's face, because he shrugs and grins, waving it away. "I did pretty well in tactical history."

"Yeah, I bet," Poe says slowly. 

"Cassian!" Finn says suddenly. "Cassian Andor, that's who I was thinking of." His enthusiasm drains out; now he seems, if anything, a little embarrassed. "Sorry, just like to get it right."

"No problem," Poe says, busy with the controls. "I never thought about what they must have taught you."

"Not that much," Finn tells him. "Mostly to shut up and get moving."

Poe winces even as Finn laughs at his own joke.

*

In port, as planned, they exchange the rehabbed skiff for an old Imperial barque, a little roomier but not by much.

The customs official makes them drag out all of the cargo preloaded on the barque to be checked against the manifest. 

"So you saw he was hot--" Finn starts to say, pushing the hand truck down the gangway.

From where he's squatting next to the largest pile of cartons, Poe shakes his head. "We're back to that?"

"We're back to that, yeah. Passes the time." Finn tips the last load off the hand truck, leans it against the gangway, and grabs the datapad from Poe's hands. "So you met this hot guy, but you didn't make a move?"

"Nope." Poe takes back the datapad. "Can you count the spools again?"

Finn moves over to the spools. "That doesn't sound like you. Were you coming down with something?"

"You know, I have _some_ sense of appropriate behavior," Poe says. He frowns at the datapad when he scrolls too fast and has to crawl back up. Then he treats Finn to an even fiercer version of that frown. "I'm trusted with these missions, right? Obviously I can manage to pull it together to read the situation and behave decently. Most of the time, anyway. Even I can tell that making a pass at a grief-stricken sniffling dude isn't the greatest idea. Besides--"

"Whoa, whoa, sorry," Finn says and backs up a little away from the heat in Poe's voice. "I didn't mean to--"

"It's cool." Poe links their arms. "Besides, like I was _trying_ to say, I was saving myself for you."

Finn laughs long and hard and loud at that, all the way back to the official's perch.

"Twelve six-counts of spools," he says in between laughs. "Put that down."

Poe cocks one eyebrow. "It's true. You don't have to split your jumper over it."

"In a way, sure," Finn says, half-hugging, half-wrestling him, scuffling lightly. "From one very particular, even _peculiar_ angle. Your noble sacrifice is noted and appreciated, don't worry."

"It wasn't _that_ hard," Poe says, all modesty and forbearance better suited to a debriefing or holo-interview. Before Finn's chuckles can gather together and transform into another booming laugh, he adds, "and it was worth it in the end."

"Aw," Finn says, and it sounds sarcastic, but he's also grinning. "Somehow you managed to make it sound nice."

"It _was_ nice."

"I said it was."

"No, you said it only _sounded_ nice."

They've been spending a lot of time together. Their close quarters certainly haven't bred contempt, not at all, but they have fuelled a never-ending rhythm of bickering and flirting that, while Finn and Poe find it endlessly amusing, is also entirely pointless. Maybe even slightly aggressive.

"Man, are you _jealous_?" Poe finally asks, hours later, when they've eaten and are back aboard the barque for a rest shift. "Is that it?"

Finn looks at him, baffled. "Of what? What are you talking about?"

Poe's pulling his shirt off over his head, but answers anyway. "Of what, I don't know. You just keep asking all these questions about Calrissian and making cracks about me and I don't know what the hell you're trying to say."

Finn sinks onto the edge of the fold-out bunk. "I was just talking."

"Yeah, but what were you _saying_?" Poe asks, hitching his foot up next to Finn's leg so he can unlace his boot. Finn grasps the toe of the boot to help keep him in place. "Thanks."

"Welcome," Finn says automatically. He lies back then, staring up at the bulkhead. "I thought talking and saying were the same thing. I wasn't sending you secret messages."

There's a hollow thump as Poe pushes off his boot and crawls up to straddle Finn's thigh. "I didn't say secret messages. I just wondered--"

Finn's hands come up Poe's hips and settle lightly on the indent of his waist. "Just making conversation. Joking around."

"But--" Poe drops his face against Finn's chest, right up at his armpit. "Forget it."

"No, man, say it."

Finn's hand is in his hair, lightly, slowly stroking. Poe looks up. "I don't fucking know."

"You're mad, though."

"No. I'm _confused_ , I guess."

Finn swallows, closing his eyes, working his fingertips along the hairline on Poe's neck. "That's what we do. Joke around."

"I guess," Poe says, turning his head so his cheek rests on Finn's pec, running his palm up and down Finn's far arm. "We can talk, though, too. If you--"

"We do talk," Finn says and shakes Poe lightly by the hair. "What's this? What do you call what we're doing right now?"

"Agonizing and ill-advised?" Poe asks, glancing up.

Finn shakes him again, harder, then drags him upward, craning down to kiss him. 

*

"I'm not really sure how jealousy works," Finn says later. "Maybe I am?"

"Nah," Poe tells him. "I don't know what the hell I'm talking about most of the time. You shouldn't listen to me." When Finn laughs, Poe adds, "I'm serious."

"Yeah, right," Finn replies. "If that's true, then we're both pretty fucked, you know that?"

"Sure, but it's a good way to go out, right?"

"The best, probably," Finn says and pushes Poe ahead of him through the entrance to the hangar.

They seem to have agreed to try not to take anything too seriously. Neither would be able to say _when_ they did that, and they wouldn't want to examine too closely _why_ , but here they are in the aftermath of that agreement.

*

In his solo missions, Finn has been quite successful, earning praise from both General Organa and the Admiralty-in-Resistance. He is patient and attentive, able to listen closely and keep to his objectives. Whatever he might lack in _ease_ (the General's term; Finn himself says that he's way too formal and takes refuge in being analytical when confronted with puzzling or challenging situations), he makes up for with deliberation and thoroughness.

His status as The Trooper Who Broke Away is invaluable on these diplomatic errands. Finn, however, maintains that this reputation has very little to do with his own capabilities, let alone how he conducts himself in negotiations.

"Are you kidding? Laserbrained? Feeling feverish? That has everything to do with it, it's _you_. Only you!" Poe argues.

"It's just gossip," Finn says. "I can't actually do very much about what they say or think about me."

"But it's not gossip, it's the truth. You're the one who did it, you're the one who--"

"But it's not important," Finn says, quietly but very firmly.

"Of course it's--" Poe stops. They're talking past each other. As much as he relishes getting to see and hear just how Finn's mind operates, he suspects that pressing the argument now will just end up frustrating them both. There's getting to experience Finn's smarts and then there's poking at him for no good reason.

"I ran because I was scared," Finn says later. "Because I couldn't kill for them. That's not admirable, that's nothing to build a reputation on."

"But--" Poe shakes his head and presses the heels of his hands against his eyes. "You're being really harsh on yourself."

Finn does chuckle at that, so that's good. "Oh, you think?"

"Yeah." Poe tosses him his sweater. "You look cold."

"Thanks." Finn pulls it on over his head; when he pops back into view, he says, "I want to _do_ good things. Not just run away."

Poe swallows the urge to say the first seven things that occur to him. "You took down Starkiller, man."

"You and Solo and Rey did that. And I don't--"

Poe digs in his satchel for the half ration bar he hid there a couple days ago. He doesn't let himself respond until he's chewed and swallowed all of it. Sometimes, it's like he barely knows this man, despite everything. Like he's meeting Finn for the first or second time, and he knows as surely as he knew then how _good_ he is, how wonderful, and yet the person Finn is remains mysterious. Almost unreachable, and all Poe has to work with is words and hands. Not much at all.

He settles down on the bunk next to Finn and knocks his knee against Finn's. "Do you want me to make a list? Everything admirable about you? Each accomplishment, large and small and every single one in between."

"No, please, _no_ ," Finn says, shuddering and shaking his head.

"Beautiful," Poe says, settling against Finn's side, his arm creeping around Finn's shoulders. "Brave, so fucking brave. Stop snorting, I heard that. Thoughtful. Caring. Handsome, which is totally different from beautiful, hush. Excellent strategist--"

"Poe," Finn says, looking down at his hands. "Stop, please."

"Best kisser in any sector you care to name. Softest, smoothest skin. Gorgeous-est dick."

" _Man_."

"Hey, I'm just getting going here," Poe says as innocently as he can, even as Finn wrestles him down and kisses him.

"Stop it," Finn tells him, his mouth hovering right above Poe's. "I'm begging you."

"Is that an offer?" Poe asks and works his hand under Finn's trouser waistband to stroke the rise of his ass. "Can you beg real sweet and make it worth my while?"

There's a flash of Finn's white teeth and wink of his eyes. "Anything."

*

At the next port, a required stop for those entering the system, a message awaits them from the general secretary of Brume Unlimited - galactic in scope, personal in detail! \- requesting that they transfer the barque's cargo to the ship in bay 7281. The message is addressed to their cover names, so they comply.

"Starting to hate these things," Finn mutters.

"Starfighters? Inflatable pillows? Ration slurries? There's a lot to hate, buddy, you need to be more specific."

"Missions," Finn replies. When Poe doesn't say anything, he sighs and adds, "It's all lying and waiting around and getting frustrated and then lying some more."

"Oh," Poe says after a bit. "Shit."

"I _know_ it's not really lying," Finn says, almost as if he has to clarify lest Poe take him to task. "And I don't really hate them. I'm just --. Why does everything have to be so complicated? Every single time."

"I dunno," Poe says. "Guess because things are incredibly shitty and really complicated anyway, so navigating that has to be complicated, too?"

"Yeah, probably." Finn sighs. "Frustrating, that's all."

"I can help," Poe says quickly. "I'd _love_ to help with that."

Finn snorts at that and covers Poe's hand with his own. "Kind of thought you'd say that."

"Just offering, no pressure. Out of the kindness of my heart."

"Kindness of your heart, tension in your pants, same difference?"

"Yeah." Poe bites the curve of Finn's shoulder. "Tongue in your mouth, maybe your fingers up my ass?"

Finn snorts again, but the sound gets longer, gruntier, as he rolls over, pulling himself on top of Poe, and then he's laughing, kissing him, grinding down until Poe pants against his cheek and tightens his arms around Finn's neck.

This isn't all that complicated. They're really good at it, too.

*

They hang in border stasis for several hours. There's nothing to do but fuck, nap, and then screw around again. Now, when they're truly spent, they start talking.

"When I woke up," Finn says slowly, "on Jakku, the sky was white, it was so bright."

Poe nods, even though he came to at night, so what he woke to was cold dark, sharp as the sheared metal poking his side.

"And the horizon was..." Finn closes his eyes for a moment. When they open, he continues, "so wide. Bigger than anything I'd ever seen. Been able to see."

Poe only learned recently, when he and Kun tried to sneak aboard a First Order freighter, that the Stormtrooper helmets prevent their occupants from looking wherever they want. The inner cowl and helmet itself restrict the head's motion to a fairly dangerous degree. When he complained, later, to Finn about this, Finn just laughed a little, joylessly. "Eyes down," he said like he was reciting, "mind empty, trigger ready."

"I'm glad you made it," he tells Finn now. He doesn't know why, but thinking of that crash, his hubris enveloping them in flames, makes him sick, still. 

Finn's gaze ticks over to Poe and he nods a little as he wets his lips. He's making a point, Poe understands suddenly, not just reminiscing for the hell of it. Poe nods back, biting his lip, and waits for Finn to continue.

"And I watched the TIE disappear, watched _you_ disappear, and then...." He shakes himself, like he's fighting to stay awake, and tightens his hand in Poe's. "You, and Rey, then Solo and Chewie. Everything filled up."

"What did?" Poe asks. He sounds a little hoarse, but Finn doesn't seem to notice. He's peering off into the distance, lips forming words he doesn't speak.

Finally, Finn says, "the blank, the white. It got crowded, kept expanding."

"The horizon," Poe says and tries like hell not to think about that same horizon tilting like a gash and swallowing them up.

"What I could see," Finn says, but he's nodding, so maybe Poe did get it right. "Everyone I could see."

"Yeah," Poe says into the quiet hovering around them.

"It wasn't hard," Finn says and squeezes his eyes shut. "I thought it'd be hard." He takes a breath and looks at Poe. "Caring about people, I mean."

"No, it's pretty easy."

"For _you_ ," Finn says. The accusation is very mild, but still an accusation. "For me, I thought...."

"You're really good at it," Poe tries. "That's all I meant."

Finn half-smiles at that. "What if it's too easy? What if I'm doing it wrong?"

"I--" Poe starts to say, then stops, because he doesn't actually know what to say. Sure, there are plenty of ways to care wrong, to hurt and manipulate and neglect, but it's impossible to think of Finn alongside any of those. "No."

"The shapes you make, it's..." Finn looks at Poe sharply. Beseechingly. "You fill me up, all of you."

"Is that all right?" Poe asks, as carefully as he can.

Finn takes his time replying. He thinks so hard, so carefully, that Poe assumes it must be beautiful, an immersive holo, sculptural and grand and symphonic. "There's always more room," Finn says. "It doesn't make any sense."

"But you're okay with that." Poe tries to keep his tone steady and _not_ pose it as a question.

Finn nods. "I'm okay with the room. I don't like the not-sensemaking, but I'm trying to get used to that."

Poe has a thousand things he wants to say, except the words for most of them don't exist. He has a thousand feelings he wants to share, that's more accurate: small moments of happiness and larger stretches of comfort and ease, memories of birds overhead and long agonizing phases of yearning for Finn, missing him, needing him back and solid, safe.

*

At Sevtoff, in the center of the system, where they are set to meet Calrissian, they wait at the contact point for two standard days. They're both antsy; there are only so many rounds of sabacc they can play, after all, without calling attention to themselves. Especially considering Finn's preternatural luck and Poe's penchant for talking shit when he gets particularly bored.

Eighteen standard hours is the usual time allowed for waiting to make contact. But if they stop waiting, their only real choice is to head back empty-handed. They've asked around about as discreetly as they can and no one's heard of a Soccorran or Bespinian, let alone of Calrissian himself.

Finally, a holo playing in the cantina they retire to for regrouping catches Finn's eye. An ad for Brume Unlimited, now in partnership with Nebula Getaways, bids you to set lumo-sail for the fabulous resort destination of Gnam-D.

"That's it," Finn says, replaying the holo. "That's where we need to be going."

"Yeah?" Poe watches it, brow all wrinkled up, and then starts it again. The voice-over sounds familiar, maybe. Maybe not. It's loud in here and this could be wishful thinking, but the voice does seem to have that rich timbre he recalls from Calrissian's eulogy. 

Finn nods. "That's where we should head."

Poe rubs his mouth, then the back of his neck, thinking. He's achey from flying shitty ships with bad seats and worse controls. He's tired of waiting like an asshole, like a sitting swamp-honker. "It's our best lead, but it's not much."

"But it's the best."

"Yeah." Poe rubs his forehead now. He's _really_ tired. "But it's our best because it's our only."

Finn's grin breaks like wave on a rock, sudden and powerful. "But it's the best."

Poe could pull rank here. That would be easy, considering he _has_ rank while Finn remains officially unaffiliated. He could say "this is stupid, we're not going anywhere, we'll keep waiting". He could even say "fuck that, we're going home".

They both know what he _could_ do.

And he's tempted. 

If he _doesn't_ shut down this plan, is he doing it because of what Finn means to him personally? Or does Finn mean what he means to Poe because of great instincts like this?

(You mean a lot to me is how grownups express I really like your dick and your company and your dumb jokes and also your smile and the way you smell.)

"It's your call, I guess," Finn says after the silence has stretched and started to wear through, fray, tatter. He sits back, flicking his thumb lightly against the base of the holo player.

Poe shakes his head. "No, it's--" He has to stop, grin, and shake it off. "It's 'our call'."

One corner of Finn's mouth deepens, like he wants to smile. "So what do you say?"

"Let's check it out."

"That's what I'm talking about," Finn says, but not quite as exuberantly as Poe was expecting. He pushes back from the bar. "Shall we?"

"Can I nap?" That comes out far whinier than he'd meant. He coughs into his hand and straightens up. "Need a nap first, then we'll set out. Sound good?"

"Sounds great."

*

When they declare their destination as Gnam-D, a flagged message appears on the terminal. Just for them, and triply-crypted.

They have to shift the cargo _again_ , and there are three extra pallets now, wrapped in gray shrink-synth.

Just before they exit the hyperlane for Gnam-D, they switch positions in the cockpit. Finn will pose as the pilot, Poe as his dogged, even devoted, first mate.

"So you have to do everything I say?" 

"Hardly. This is just for the customs crew, _maybe_ interrogator droids if we're unlucky." Poe hands him the peaked helmet and floor-length coat before pulling on his own costume, almost Jakku-like robes and soft knee-high boots.

"Mm-hmm, mm-hmm." Finn nods and rubs the side of his jaw. "During all of which you have to do what I say."

Poe glances up from lacing his boots. "Man, you're enjoying this a _little_ too much--"

"Am I? Kind of feel like I haven't yet begun to enjoy this."

When Poe groans, clambering to his feet, Finn claps his shoulder and shakes him a little, then nudges him ahead. "Come along, matey. There's cargo to be fetched and manifests to be checked."

"Hey--" Poe catches him by the cuff and tugs. "Just don't forget that there are probably bugs everywhere."

Finn widens his eyes. "You don't say? So I should be careful, right? And not let loose with the truth?"

"Come on--" Poe scrubs his hand through his hair. "It bears repeating, all right?"

Finn lifts one shoulder and sighs. "Think that's my call, actually. As captain and all."

"You're unbearable," Poe tells him, following him out.

"I'm perfectly bearable, as a matter of fact," Finn says, striding out with hands on his hips, his chin lifted defiantly. "Bearable, and _then_ some."

*

"They have ears everywhere," is the first thing Calrissian says to them. He says it as casually as someone else might shout hello across the bar to an acquaintance.

His hair's silvered, like old jewelry, and soft to the touch (or so it seems); his mustache perfectly neat, two brush strokes brighter silver above his smiling mouth.

"So good to meet you," he says, all smiles and lifting, swirling cape, taking Poe by both elbows and pulling him in close, kissing both his cheeks, before turning to Finn. "You must be the captain? Sir."

He bows slightly at the waist, and his cape flutters off one shoulder, then settles down.

Finn had been getting ready for an embrace and kiss, so he's leaning in, overbalancing a little. Poe tugs him back, fingers in his belt.

"Sir," Poe says lowly.

"Thanks, buddy," Finn replies. "Major Calrissian?"

"The very one," Calrissian says, and bows again. It's starting to make Poe a little dizzy. 

"We had a little trouble--" Poe starts to say but Finn clears his throat.

Calrissian glances at Poe, quickly, then focuses solely on Finn, as if he is the captain, really is in charge. 

"Had some trouble at the border." Finn keeps his voice pitched low and mature-sounding. "Some, ah. Ruffians."

"No!" Calrissian says, feigning shock so theatrically that Poe rocks back and Finn rubs his hand over his mouth to hide his grin. "Not _ruffians_?"

"Some rebels, mostly profiteers," Finn says, loud enough for any surveillance equipment to be sure to pick up. "They tried to shake us, but we made short work of 'em, right?"

Poe takes half a moment to catch up, but then he gulps and nods rapidly. "Had a little fun."

"Excellent!" Calrissian claps his hands, then takes Finn's arm firmly. His cape whispers and slides against Finn's skin like water. "Let me buy you a round or three, captain."

"My mate--" Finn says, glancing over his shoulder.

Poe's still standing there, both hands in his pockets, looking a little bereft, a lot confused.

"Oh, he'll be _fine_ ," Calrissian says. After a few steps, he says, "unless you'd like to treat him to a nice time?"

Finn pretends to think it over. "You know, he's really been putting in his all lately. Deserves a nice time. Maybe even two."

Calrissian's smile gets, somehow, impossibly, wider. "Wonderful!"

Finn turns around. "Hey, buddy, come on. What's taking you so long?"

The grin that breaks out on Poe's face is genuine -- startled, then pleased, then relieved -- all in a moment before he masters himself and turns it into something cockier and more public.

"Oh, I get to hang with the toffs?" he calls back. "Is this a trick? Are you firing me?"

"Let's see how you hold it together tonight," Finn tells him.

Calrissian claps Poe on the shoulder as he joins them. "My friend, we're going to have us a _time_."

"Wow," Poe says, and there's more than a slight trace of Finn himself in his wondering tone and wide eyes. "Sounds great."

Finn elbows him gently when they crowd into the magno-lift and Poe resolutely ignores him. Doesn't even look his way, yet does press his leg against Finn's, long enough that it means something, cannot be accidental.

Calrissian takes them to the corporate penthouse, several stories above the next tallest buildings. He suggests that they rest a little, maybe wash up, before meeting again.

Poe is assigned what's little more than a closet, but it's clean and smells good, so it's not as if he can complain. The fresher offers sonic _and_ hydro options, so he washes three times before heading out in search of Finn and their host.

The suite is small enough that it shouldn't be possible to lose track of his companions. Poe paces around the central room, taking in the no-doubt impressive embroidery on the drapery, picking up and putting down small pieces that might be ancient tech or fossils. He can't tell, they're all vaguely ivory-colored and heavier than they look. The carpets are ridiculously soft under his bare feet, like nothing so much as Yavin meadows in high spring after a rain.

Finally, having looked down each of the spokes that serve as passageways off the main circular room, he sees Lando and Finn where, he could have sworn, he himself began. Close to the waterfall, their figures are slightly blurred by its spray. Backs to Poe, they are bent together, the taller Calrissian stooping a little to bring his face close; his arm is around Finn, rings winking as he gently massages Finn's shoulder.

Restrained by his role -- a ship's mate, no matter how close to his captain he might be, can't just break into a conversation -- as well as by a sudden surge of shyness, Poe hangs back. _Shyness_ isn't quite the word; he's never been shy. But he's stumped, here, unsure where to look, wholly uncertain what he would say even if he were to join them.

_Like the galaxy shrank down to just the two of you_ , Karé Kun said scornfully a month or so back when she got loaded on spice and decided to tell Poe what she really thought of him and Finn. Her eyes were bloodshot, her speech slurred, as she poked him hard in the chest. _Like no one else matters, exists._

_That's not true,_ he tried to say. _That's not how it is at all._

_It's fucking beautiful, is what it is,_ Karé said before punching him a little too hard for comfort. _Annoying as shit, of course, but beautiful, too. Dumb old Dameron, heart on your sleeve, went and got it all._

He wonders now if what she was describing is what he's feeling about Finn and Lando. They're nodding, bumping closer together, Finn's arm snaking around Lando's waist. The curve of Finn's cheek as he looks up at Lando is so perfect, it puts all the art around them to shame.

Poe doesn't think he's jealous. He hasn't _lost_ anything, after all. Being excluded isn't the end of the world, particularly when you're undercover.

There is so much food at dinner that, were Poe anyone else, he might start to feel a little ill. As it is, however, he just keeps eating until each platter disappears into the table-droid. He misses BB-8 suddenly, a pang like heartburn that distracts him long enough that he loses his place in the conversation.

Calrissian is holding another, smaller platter. Vials and winding tubes decorate its surface. "Spice?"

"Oh, no," Finn says politely. "We couldn't impose."

"Nonsense. "What sort of host would I be if I neglected to offer you gentlemen the full range of my hospitality?"

Poe licks his lips. Whatever Calrissian has, it's bound to be the best stuff available. He doesn't even recognize some of the vials. "Any purple?"

Calrissian smiles at him; he's always smiling, but this one feels private, special just for Poe. "Of course. It's quite potent, of course."

Out of the corner of his eye, Poe can half-see, half-sense Finn thinking hard. He pulls his chair out from the table and leans back, arms crossed. "Purple," he says firmly.

"I'll leave you two to it, then," Calrissian says, handing the purple box to Finn. Poe remembers belatedly that he's supposed to be the inferior here.

"You should stay," Poe tells him and, clearing his throat, Finn nods.

"Really?"

"Of course," Finn says.

"At my age, it's nice to feel wanted," Calrissian says. 

Poe shifts and snickers softly. "We should all be so lucky to look half as good at half your age."

One of Calrissian's brows arches and his mustache lifts, widens, with his smile. He glances at Finn. "Is your mate always this charming?"

"This is him on an off day," Finn replies.

Poe frowns at him but Finn just shrugs, smiles, and sets to filling the spice array.

Calrissian fills Poe in on the single-estate origins of his spice, the lineage of its growers and refiners, while Finn tests the bubbling array. Satisfied with his first lungful, he passes the array to Calrissian, who helps himself, and hands it on to Poe.

Even adulterated, scrumpy purple spice is good. This clean strain goes right to Poe's head and groin; Finn's a relative lightweight, so he's half in Poe's lap after his second taste. Kissing while spiced will always make Poe feel like he's fourteen again, in the back barn, sandwiched between Muran and Rima Lobin. He's floating in place, tongue halfway down Finn's throat, and he can't remember where else he ought to be.

"Perhaps you lads would like a little help?" Calrissian's down on one knee, smiling almost indulgently at them. His hand slips down Finn's back, skidding in the sweat, and comes to rest in the hollow just over his ass.

"What've you got?" Poe asks, shifting up, working the ache out of his jaw.

"Just this," Calrissian says and breathes out an enormous lungful of lavender mist over their faces.

Finn sucks in most of it, his head tipping against Poe's chest for a moment.

"Good enough for me," Poe says and reaches forward. His hand is disconnected, but he hopes it reaches its target. "Mr. Calrissian. Sir."

"Oh, no," Calrissian breathes, both hands on Poe's knees as the table sinks into the floor and voluptuous cushions spring up in its place. "Call me Lando."

"Lando," Finn echoes and giggles.

Poe kisses Finn again, worries on his lip a little, then curls his fingers into the silken weight of Lando's cape.

It's not (simply) that Poe can feel Finn's eyes on him as he pushes open Lando's shirt and runs his hand up Lando's chest. He _knows_ that Finn's watching, because Poe's watching back, every chance he gets. His gaze swings between Finn's form, hunched forward, unblinking eyes, and Lando's sinuous torso, silver hair and hint of muscle beneath well-burnished skin. 

Even when Lando tugs on Poe's hair, pulling back his head to slide his mouth across the base of Poe's throat, even as Poe wraps an arm around Lando's head to keep him there, to offer more to teeth and bruise-hard suckling, Poe looks for Finn. He finds him: moving closer yet, his expression intent and fascinated. Finn breathes through parted lips as he reaches over.

He brushes the back of his knuckles across Poe's cheek, then down Lando's neck.

"Come closer, buddy," Poe says and Finn nods, then again, more emphatically.

Lando looks back, that smile spreading, and shifts out of Poe's hold, backward, to drape himself against Finn's chest. Finn meets him, tugs him closer, one large hand with fingers spread already sweeping down Lando's chest. They're tucking into Lando's open fly as Lando reaches back and up to pull Finn down for a kiss that does not end.

All the while, Finn's looking at Poe, still, now through his lashes. Poe doesn't know what he sees -- that is, he _knows_ , he's probably flushed and his hair's messy and he has that dopey _I'm getting laid!_ grin he's been told is impossible to wipe off his face. But he doesn't _know_ , not in any real sense, why Finn looks at him like that, what he can possibly get out of it. Just that he does.

Lando and Finn are beautiful together, all tangled up now, Finn stroking Lando, Lando kissing him like it's a medical necessity. Finn is darker, and broader, so against him, Lando is twisting like light, throwing off silver, until suddenly he's kneeling over Finn's leg and blocking Poe's view as he pushes Finn onto his back.

Poe rises on his knees, craning to see. They're kissing fiercely, Lando plastered atop Finn; Finn has one big hand wrapped loosely around both their cocks, jerking them raggedly as he groans into Lando's mouth.

Poe's dick strains for attention, but he sits there, hands on his knees, taking it all in. He could watch Finn do just about anything, honestly, whether that's cleaning his blaster or play mosaics with Connix or shovel dinner into his mouth at a truly prodigious rate. But this is among the best of possibilities, Finn rolling his hips and stroking himself and Lando. His legs are open, flung apart, his trousers in a snarl on the floor just beside Poe.

Their kiss only breaks when Poe crawls forward and puts one hand on Lando's hip, the other on Finn's inner thigh -- right in the crease, his thumb dipping down behind Finn's balls.

"Maybe I could...?" Poe starts, but Finn's pushing up on one elbow and looking down at him, smile tipping up. He releases his hold on their cocks and rubs his palm over Poe's waiting lip. Spit floods Poe's mouth, immediately, as desire rots out into sheer need and grasping hunger.

"Yeah," Finn says, nodding. They're still playing, lest anyone be watching, but they're _not_ playing, too. "Go for it."

"Both," Poe tells him, or asks, and, eyes widening, Finn nods all the faster.

"He's pretty ambitious," Finn tells Lando, "about some things, anyway." 

Chuckling, murmuring something about _always respect the ambition_ , Lando slips against Finn, one leg thrown over Finn's, guiding his dick toward Poe.

Poe leaves his hand on Finn's thigh, for mooring, for balance, and tries to find the angle and rhythm that will let him do this halfway decently. When it's just Finn, Poe pushes his whole body into it, mouth and shoulders and torso shoving as close as he can get. Now, however, the challenge is less about taking it all than it is about giving enough attention to both. Lando's cockhead skates sticky-sweet across Poe's jaw, and when Poe turns, closes his lips around it, Lando's moan sings out over him and down through him. Poe pulls off, nudges forward, finds Finn's head unerringly, and bobs his head several times. 

Like that, turn and work, then drop and bob, the rhythm, such as it is, establishes itself. He's ravenous, thirsty, swallowing spit and precome like they're water in the desert, while Finn and Lando undulate above him, mouths plastered together, hands trailing through gleaming sweat.

"Oh, you sweet, sweet thing--" Lando sits up a little, propped against Finn, his cock swelling _more_ in Poe's mouth. Knowing he must be close, Poe turns bodily to give him full attention; Lando's hand curves around the back of his neck, and then Finn's touching him, too, tracing the seal of his lips and hollow of his cheeks before tangling fingers in Poe's hair, pushing him farther down.

Finn's watching him, and Poe's performing and confessing all at once. He bounces his soft palate a couple times before taking Lando into his throat and swallowing harder. His nose wheezes, tears sting his eyes, but Finn's holding him, gaze fastened. Poe stares back, Finn's grasp making him slide up and down the shaft until Lando's jerking and shooting, filling Poe's mouth, pulling out, finishing with two splashes across Poe's cheek.

"Fuck," Finn says, yanking his hand free of Poe's hair to take hold of his cock. 

Grunting, Poe falls toward Finn, mouth on his hand, then back on his cock, and, after several confused heartbeats, Finn lets go to grasp Poe's head again.

"Yes. Oh, yes," Lando's saying, rubbing Poe's shoulder, leaning closer to watch.

Poe's mouth and throat are slick with Lando's come, with his own thirst, and Finn slides down, all the way in, rocking his hips to push further and shoot. The burn of the stretch, the _weight_ , of him in Poe is just right, not quite enough (never enough) but so close. His pubes grab at Poe's stubble, his fingers flex in Poe's hair, his voice rises and breaks.

"Fuck," he says again, and then again. Finn rarely curses, except during sex, and then as plainly and unmistakably as he does everything else. "Oh, _fuck_."

Poe blinks away dark, spinning shapes and struggles to breathe through his nose. Reluctantly, he pulls off, as slowly as he can, then returns to suck just the head until, whimpering, Finn pushes him away.

"That good, boss?" Poe asks, wiping his mouth with his hand.

Finn has flopped back, laughing gutturally, while Lando reclines on his side next to him.

"Marvelous," Lando says to no one in particular. "Just marvelous."

He's a very perceptive man, this Calrissian.

*

"Txibia," Lando pronounces over the morning meal. "I'm _very_ interested in its potential, I must say."

Finn takes a sip of tea and shudders a bit at the heat and spiciness as he swallows. "The exoplanet out in the Craii sector?"

Grinning, Lando passes the platter of savory pastries to Poe without a glance. "The very one, indeed. Its native sentients are absolutely enthralling."

"Interesting," Finn says. "Wouldn't have figured you for a tentacle enthusiast."

Lando winks at him over his own bowl of tea. "My young friend, I'd think after last night you'd know I'm enthusiastic about _many_ different things."

"Tentacles?" Poe asks, then helps himself to the best-stuffed pastry; it's nearly as hot as the tea, so he yelps as it drops from his scorched fingers. Spluttering, sucking on his fingertips, he grabs for it with his other hand before it slides off the table. Rescue accomplished, he breaks it apart, then pops half into his mouth. Chewing, he looks back and forth between Finn and Lando. "Wait, what? _Tentacles?_ "

Lando takes his leave soon after, excusing himself heartily, citing corporate duties. Before he goes, he clears their passage through four systems and transfers several thousand credits into their cover's accounts.

Despite the money, Poe's left with the strong sense that they've failed. That was a waste of a time. An entertaining, ultimately highly _satisfying_ waste of time, but still a waste. They still need to find depots, and the number of refugees requiring help seems to increase exponentially by the day.

It isn't until they're out of the sector that Finn says different. They're switching seats so Poe can take the controls as they hit an unexpectedly rough stretch of gamma-rifts.

"So now we know where to look," Finn says, more to himself than Poe, as he enlarges a few cartographic projections and taps his fingers against his knee. "Interesting. Very interesting."

"What're you muttering about?" Poe can't fully look away from the monitors, not with the ionizing rates spiking and falling like this.

"Txibia," Finn replies. "Calrissian's right, it would suit our purposes perfectly."

"The tentacle planet?" Poe jerks the ship to starboard, then hits the jumpdrive.

As they slow down, the jump completing, Finn's smiling at him, bright as morning. "The tentacle planet."

First, however, they have to wait. Nothing can be arranged, not even a diplomatic visit, until the planet's ruler makes an appearance. The king rises, it is said, sometimes twice an annual cycle.

They just have to bide their time, a fact which sits very awkwardly with Poe. A little painfully, even. While he appreciates the need for delicacy and such, he'd much rather have this deal done and over with.

Finn, of course, is much more sanguine. Barely a day after their return to base, he departs for some Force mindfulness training. Lando suggested it, during their intimate little chat; mostly, Finn has said, they talked about Solo, but then, right at the end, Calrissian said out of the blue that Finn ought to tune up whatever Force sensitivities he possesses.

"Come back a Jedi," Poe tells him when they say goodbye. He's walking Finn to the shuttle, their arms around each other.

"It's not like that," Finn says for the hundredth time, but Poe can't help teasing him. Finn would make a great Jedi, it's not _Poe's_ fault that this is just a fact.

Poe tries to look solemn. "Because of the celibacy, huh?"

"Sure," Finn says and squeezes Poe closer for a moment, their stride breaking. "You're too irresistible, what can I do?"

"My curse," Poe replies, "and my blessing."

Finn shakes him, then harder, hand in Poe's hair. "Something like that."

They've already reached the shuttle gantry. Poe forces himself to take a step backward; he gets clingy, he knows that, and the last thing Finn needs right now is worrying about dumb old Dameron.

"Poe...." Finn says and pulls him back into a one-armed hug. "I'll be back soon, okay?"

"Soon, later, whatever you need," Poe says stoutly. His fingers won't, quite, unhook from Finn's waist. Also, his face hurts.

"Soon," Finn says firmly and kisses him. "Dumbass."

"You're the dumbass."

"No, _I'm_ the fine ass."

Poe nods and gulps and attempts a smile. "Shit, you're right."

"Usually am." Grinning, Finn kisses him again, then, hand on the gantry railing, nudges Poe slightly backward. "I'll see you soon."

"Yeah," Poe says. He can't stop nodding, even as the ache around his sinuses increases. He coughs into his hand, then waves. "Yeah, okay."

## 2.

The trickiest thing about Txibia -- as a culture, a species, or a planet -- is, basically, everything. The species representatives, those authorized to speak to off-worlders, have smooth, almost rubbery, visages, only slightly dented in the general region where humanoids have eyes and mouths. They are, therefore, difficult to read, and what they _say_ isn't much easier to interpret.

"Someday," the deputy repeats when Poe presses it for greater specifics. "Someday, almost definitely some day!"

"But--" Poe's so frustrated that he's actually nearly at a loss for words. He scrubs at his hair, twists and tugs at it, and finally turns in appeal to Finn. Finn's steady and calm and generous; surely _he_ knows what the hell this guy means by 'someday'. "Finn?"

Finn frowns a little. That's not bad, he always frowns as he thinks and works through a problem. "We'd like to make a firmer appointment."

"Someday!" The chief seems rather enthusiastic about the prospect. "It's very possible that someday, this could happen."

"Is there any way to know for sure?" Finn asks. He shifts so he's standing in front of Poe, blocking (one hopes) the most egregious signs of his impatience. "Any way at all?"

"Perhaps," the chief says. It may now be humoring the strange hairy aliens. "Probably, some way, I would imagine."

Poe grips Finn's shoulder and breaks in. "What do we need to do?" 

"What, indeed?" the chief says with a touch of wonder. 

"Deputy," Finn says, sliding again to block Poe. "May I speak frankly?"

The depressions where another species' eyes would be darken and seem to protrude. "Could you?"

"We desire -- very strongly, even fervently, right, Commander Dameron? -- to make arrangements with your leader. Your entire populace, really. But first we must state our case, obtain His Grace's leave, and--"

"Statements have no--" the deputy begins.

"-- home here, we know!" Poe finishes for him. "But, look, we need--" He tries to shake off the hand Finn puts on his shoulder, but Finn grips him tighter and, sighing, Poe slumps back. "Forget it, we'll just leave, there's no point wasting our time here any more."

"Sssh," Finn tells him before turning back to the official. "Deputy, please. Time is a factor here."

"For you, perhaps," the deputy says. 

"Yes, for us."

"Here, time is a plaything."

Behind Finn, Poe groans, then mutters, "tell me about it."

"Why don't you return to the ship, Commander, my friend," Finn suggests, ignoring the snort of derision Poe gives him for that, "and I'll keep talking with the deputy consul here."

"Yeah, that's a good idea," Poe says. "You're a damn genius."

"Hardly," Finn says, but to the deputy, because Poe is all but _dashing_ away.

*

"What's wrong?" Finn asks when he gets back to the ship. "You're being weird."

Poe has spent the intervening time _cleaning up_ , which just goes to show how frustrated and bored he is.

"This place is weird," Poe says. "I'm being normal."

"Normal for you is pretty weird."

"Yeah, fine, but I'm not being weirder than that."

"I dunno," Finn says, sitting on a crate and clasping his hands between his knees. "I really don't."

After they eat and nap, Finn goes for a meditation walk. When he returns, Poe's naked and spread across the bunk, ready for fun.

Instead, Finn looks grave. "I think we should go tactile."

Poe's entire body flashes numb, then flushed and hot. "What the hell, Finn?"

"Waiting and hoping is getting us nowhere."

"True, but that's no reason to--"

"We need their help," Finn says. He's so reasonable, and calm, it would probably annoy Poe coming from anyone else. But this is Finn, so he isn't annoyed, he's just -- something. "What other options do we have?"

"There's no guarantee that initiating tactility will get us their help."

"Not doing it hasn't gotten us very far," Finn points out.

"Okay, but that's like...like. A double negative, right? 'X didn't happen therefore Y'?"

Finn frowns, but gently and slowly, as he tries to work out whatever it is Poe just said. Poe sure hopes he can, because he himself has no clue.

"Why shouldn't we try it?" Finn asks after a long silence. "Tell me why not."

"Because it's fucking dangerous?"

"All right," he says and nods. "What else?"

"I think that's all we need to know!"

"I just want to know all the options," Finn says.

"Insanity, coma, complete loss of psychological cohesion... Any of that sound familiar? Please don't tell me I was the one actually paying attention in a briefing, because that would be strange and wrong and backwards."

Finn's still nodding, actively _thinking_ through the problem. It's a beautiful sight, it really is, even if Poe's worked up and irritated and now, frankly, starting to get a little worried.

"None of those effects have been proven, of course," Finn says. "They're all second-, even third-hand."

"It'd make no sense to go court insanity just because you're not entirely sure it won't happen." That's it, Poe can appeal to Finn's sensible nature.

"Gossip, not much more than xenophobic gossip and fourth-hand rumor..."

"Finn. Stop it."

"Stop what?" Startled, he looks up at Poe, blinking fast.

"Coming up with reasons to go tactile with these guys. Stop it."

"Why?"

"I'm concerned."

" _You're_ concerned?" Finn asks, disbelief and sarcasm turning his tone a little ugly.

"Yeah, I am. What's that supposed to mean?"

"Just--" Finn gestures broadly but vaguely. "You're _you_. You'll try anything, take any risk--"

"Sure, okay, but--" Poe trails off.

Finn leans over, frowning and intent. "But what?"

Poe looks at Finn and has no idea what he's going to say. He opens his mouth, then shrugs.

"No, what?" Finn asks, much more gently.

(Poe ought to appreciate the gentleness. It means Finn cares, cares about him and his opinion. Right now, pulse thundering in his ears and flush prickling down his back, Poe kind of detests the gentleness, like it's patronizing. He's being humored.)

"Nothing," Poe says finally, shrugging again and sitting down on the co-pilot's seat. He really should get dressed. He probably looks ridiculous, arguing while naked like this. "I'm just getting scared and timid in my old age, obviously."

"Obviously," Finn echoes softly.

"Time might be their plaything," Poe adds, dragging one boot toward him with pointed toes. "But I am most definitely its." He frowns. "Its plaything. The plaything of time. Is me."

"Yeah, I got it," Finn says and Poe waits for him to smile. It's in his tone, this quiet, appreciative sound, a slow sort of savoring lilt he uses when they're alone, when he's just had a good orgasm or Poe made an especially good joke. There it is, finally, the smile that completes the sweetness. "You're so full of shit, you know that?"

Poe wiggles down to grab his singlet from where it's stuck under the console. "Am I?"

Finn nods, as serious about this as any mission decision. "Oh, yeah."

*

They have been here for over two standard days already. The king rose three days ago and could sink again at any moment. These benthic mysteries, they are assured, exceed the ken of ordinary Txibia, let alone bipedal, dry-skinned strangers such as themselves.

The surface of the planet is rocky and, while not exactly _barren_ , certainly too empty and quiet for comfort. Poe prefers a livelier ecosystem, frankly.

"Let me guess," Finn says, "something tropical? Humid and bright, probably covered with beautiful, dense jungle?"

Poe's nodding, delighted by how well Finn understands him, before he realizes that he's being teased. "Shut up, Yavin is the best, objectively. Not my fault that's just the truth. But I like cooler temperatures, too! Something with cliffs and interesting lichens and snow showers, also good."

"Noted," Finn murmurs.

"Maybe a high-altitude plateau," Poe muses, picturing grade-school holos, _Wonders of the Galaxy_ , that kind of , "full of fossils and sharp breezes, weird warped trees."

"But we're here," Finn notes. He's being eminently sensible. "And as these things go, it's not the worst environment."

"Not the _worst_ , no, but it is pretty awful," Poe insists.

The ground here is spongy and treacherous; the weather uniformly damp and gray. Small scrubby vegetation litters the expanse in every direction. All in all, Txibia is an unimpressive, very forgettable place.

"And _quiet_ ," Poe says again, just to emphasize the point. 

"To you, maybe." Finn elbows him and grins. He's convinced that Poe's hearing has suffered after more than a decade in X-Wings, but he's probably wrong. Poe assumes he is.

"Yeah, to me." 

It's unsettling here, he doesn't add. He can't put his finger on it, beyond the pervasive quiet, but that's more than enough.

Off-worlders meet the native deputies in a complex of radiating tunnels that slant down into the planet's interior. In the old days, the tunnels served as direct entrance to the Txibia themselves in their life-world. Too much contact, however, endangered both sides. The Txibia proved susceptible to off-world viruses and bacteria, while the visitors all too often succumbed to psionic overload. Nowadays, the tunnels are reinforced with several layers of plastisteel intervening between visitor and native.

Poe was three jumps away, mopping up after a particularly bloody engagement, when the word came about the king's rising. Finn was prepared to go alone; this would hardly be his first solo mission. In the time since he'd returned from Force studies, he's run three by himself while Poe was busy in the air.

Maybe it's just Poe's jitters from battle that's making him feel so weird here. Maybe, coming straight here from that engagement means he has yet to shake all the adrenaline and sharp, agonizing focus.

Maybe that's why it seems so quiet here. It's calm, empty, silent, yet his focus stays on-point, constantly seeking the stimulus of threat. When it finds nothing, the unease grows.

Maybe Finn doesn't want him here.

*

Who are you, Poe wonders sometimes, looking sidewise at Finn, who am I with you?

Better than the alternative, he knows that, but that's not much of an answer.

*

He doesn't know why he wakes up. He usually sleeps like the very sleepy dead, after all. But he wakes up, thinking he heard Finn say his name, only to find the bunk empty beside him.

The ship is just as empty. Neat as a pin, which suggests Finn cleaned up before leaving, but that just scares Poe _more_. He pulls on whatever clothes he can find and holsters his blaster, stuffing as many extra bolts as he can into every available pocket.

He knows Finn is with the king. He just hopes he isn't too late.

Of course he is. He has shitty luck that he only miraculously tends to turn to his advantage.

When Poe breaks through the door to the chamber of the king, Finn is already hoisted in the air. Naked, his chest heaving, he dangles there, both a taunt and a promise. His arms are held behind his back, bowing his broad shoulders into an elegant, though impossible, curve. His head is thrown back, the long expanse of his throat traced with sweat; one leg is folded, wrapped up with a thick tentacle and tugged out at an acute angle so the muscles there strain and shine. Too many tentacles to count hold him fast and tease at the exposed skin.

Poe shouts Finn's name, but the only response is a throaty chuckle from the king. Poe hears it from the inside, licking at the inner curve of his skull, as well as the outside.

His blaster is long since cocked, but when Poe raises and aims it, the king whispers, "Don't."

Inside Poe's head, the voice emerges from the spaces between heartbeats.

Poe shouts, as loudly as he can, "Let him go!"

"No." The whisper comes slow and slithering.

Above him, Finn swings back and forth. His face is obscured, only his open mouth visible. The horizon of his shoulders stands out bright against the dark coiled mass of the beast. The toes of his unbound leg point and flex, just out of Poe's reach, the paler skin of his sole both tender and heartbreaking.

"Finn!" Poe tries, reaching for his foot, missing it by centimeters. A single thin tentacle tightens around the base of Finn's throat, snug as a piece of jewelry, almost as lovely. "Finn!"

The tip of the tentacle brushes across Finn's lower lip; Finn stirs in response, pursing his lips, trying to catch it with the tip of his tongue.

Poe watches, fascination and horror running through him, chasing and outpacing each other.

"He's happy," the king says, and another tentacle nudges into view between Finn's legs to twine around the base of his cock. "Isn't he beautiful like this?"

Poe ought to disagree on principle. He _does_ disagree. On principle.

But his eyes, the rest of his body, the knot of unprincipled desire that nestles at the base of his skull: they agree, wholeheartedly and vehemently.

Finn moans then and Poe drops the blaster.

Their orders, as well as sheer common sense, are absolutely clear on the matter: Do not initiate tactile contact with the Txibia. No one knows what will happen.

There are stories, of course. Each contact with other species has seen the Txibia request tactility, but diffidently, amid a swarm of vague warnings and second-guessing.

Their king, however, exhibits no such diffidence. Whether that's because of his social position or because he knows damn well it has Poe at his mercy doesn't, in the end, matter. "Let us touch you."

Poe shuffles closer to the edge. "How do you want to..."

He can't look away from Finn, who's rolled onto his side now, a thicker tentacle thrusting into his mouth. The forked end of a smaller tentacle pinches at one dark nipple, plucking it up high and tight. Instantly, Poe's lips remember the texture there, delicately pebbled.

"Shed your skin," it tells him. "Join us."

It takes him a moment to parse that. To something like this, any constraint, whether clothes or spaceship, must seem like a skin. Poe yanks off his jersey and singlet, drops them on his blaster, then hops on one foot, then the other, to get his boots and trousers off. He's hard, of course, getting harder the longer he takes in the sight Finn makes.

"All shed," he says, spreading his arms. "Now what?"

There is no reply. 

Finn's lips are wrapped obscenely around the tentacle in his mouth; one cheek bulges with it. The two around his cock are moving in opposite directions as his hips helplessly pump.

"Finn," Poe says. "Finn, _please_ \--"

Something shifts in Finn's expression, something attentive or responsive, but then he moans again and folds up his other leg to push down on however many tentacles are fucking him. He's lost in euphoria.

Arms extended, Poe points his fingers and toes and dives into the chamber.

"Stupid!" the king's voice says like a screech. Poe has to agree. He regrets it immediately as he plummets, faster than any terran-normalized gravity would allow.

A soft -- surprisingly soft -- tentacle catches Poe by one wrist and yanks him back upward. He sees, without fully understanding, the king's mass below, a naked pulsing thing, lit like lava but a little cooler than Poe's own body temperature. Countless tentacles, some frilled, others blunt-ended, compose the mass itself; they are in constant motion against each other and reaching out into the dark.

"Easy does it," he hears, the tone almost kind, the way Finn might say it when Poe trips and needs a hand up.

"Finn!" Poe shouts. He kicks at the air, thrashes it with his free arm, as if he can swim here. As if he can do anything but dangle.

Light, soft fingers are touching him everywhere. At first, he can't even _see_ them; the smallest tentacles are nearly translucent. You can make them out only as a surface distortion above whatever they're touching. He thought -- when? Why would he have been thinking about this? -- that they'd be slimy, or at least share the surprising muscled heft of a serpent.

Instead, they are light as damp feathers, and _curious_. One strokes down his face, another across his ass. His dick pounds in response and when he opens his mouth, several of them kiss him with their frills, tickle and tease his lips.

They taste faintly sweet.

He can see Finn again; the king must have moved them closer together. Finn seems to be watching him.

_Fancy meeting you here_ , Poe wants to say. Or: _Come here often, handsome?_

"You shouldn't be here," Finn says. 

But that's impossible, he's currently fellating a throbbing tentacle and fucking several more. His eyes are unfocused, though, yes, trained in Poe's general direction.

"Try and get rid of me," Poe says. He _tries_ to say, that is; he's suckling on a few frills, teasing them back with his tongue, and they're squirming delightedly against his palate.

The damp, insistent strokes around his leg spiral higher, and now they're joined by more, wrapping around his balls, bouncing them, pushing his legs apart, then twining up his shaft.

"Join us," the king says. Every touch reverberates with the sound, with the insistence, and Poe has to moan now. The heat spreading under his skin ratchets up as each pore stretches open, asks for more. He wants to get fucked in every hole.

Every single one. He looks at Finn, realizes that's what Finn's feeling right now and has been for who knows how long.

"Joined you!" Poe shouts around the tentacles in his mouth. Another is snaking across his forehead, tugging randomly at his hair before pushing down to circle his ear. Its tip prods at the opening and Poe wills it inside. 

He can touch Finn now, graze his knuckles down Finn's side, grasp the sharp angle of one hip. He fights to get closer yet, hauling himself and his bevy of partners forward until he bumps, bodily, into Finn.

"Babe," Poe whispers, but there are tendrils teasing at his cockslit now. He looks down at the _trunk_ emerging from Finn's parted buttocks and moans again. "Fuck, look at you."

Finn's head falls back and Poe butts at it with his forehead, smears it with his overbrimming mouth. He wants to taste Finn, not these little friends!

To be honest, he wants to taste everything. He wants to taste Finn's mouth and sweat and come, like he always does, like he's never going to tire of, but he doesn't want to lose the vegetable sweetness of the tentacles, either.

Maybe this is the logical progression of their relationship, from occasional hookups to threesomes with Rebel Alliance legends to an orgy with the tentacle king. Like Finn said, in some (highly specific) areas, Poe is _very_ ambitious.

Finn rises and falls on the tentacle fucking him, eyes heavily lidded but turned toward Poe. The tentacles encasing Poe's dick tighten and it's not like getting jacked off. It's like fucking forward, into Finn, into the king, burying himself to the hilt and then some. His cock strains, its roots reaching down his thighs and up his torso, pouring him forward.

"Welcome," the king says, and he's got a dirty, stupid sense of humor, because now there are frills circling Poe's ass, spiraling in, licking him open nearly as well as Finn can. "Join us."

"I'm joined, man! How much more joined can I--" He coughs, choking on a slender tendril tickling his uvula. He nudges Finn with his shoulder and catches his foot under the thing fucking up into Finn. 

Finn's hips pump desperately forward at the contact and a strangled sob comes out of his mouth. Poe watches him come, the spasms racking through him, his cock shooting, as his back arches and he just keeps coming.

"Fuck," Poe thinks, or says around the thing in his throat, or somehow communicates. 

He feels the tiny frills, spiked now, raking over his skin. Desire doubles, then doubles again, fills him all the way up. Tentacles in his ear, up his ass, tugging around his dick, fucking the spaces between his toes: he wants more. He needs so much more, he wants to come like Finn is, he wants to taste Finn and hold him and feel him moan from the inside.

His skin should pull apart, opening at each pore, widening and brightening, until he's nothing but this lacework of nerves and tentacles woven together, until he's wrapped over Finn, until he's sinking inside, catching fast, fusing and melding.

"You shouldn't be here," he thinks he hears Finn say again.

He should have jumped with his knife. If BB-8 were here, he could have grabbed the perfect tool, he could have rescued Finn and defeated the king and gone home, once again improbably victorious.

When Poe blinks, he sees Finn's figure silhouetted on the backs of his eyelids. Traced with fire, suspended and bound, but peering directly at Poe, making unmistakable contact. "Why'd you come?"

"Haven't come yet," he thinks and laughs at his own stupid entendre. "Get it?"

This must be the first phase of tactile insanity. He's talking to a Finn who isn't here, wrapping himself around the Finn who _is_ here, nuzzling his sticky skin. The residue of tentacles tastes sweeter yet, strengthening in flavor on Finn's skin. Every so often, Poe tastes a drop or two of come, something sharp and sour that cuts through the haze.

"Shed your skin," the king says.

Poe doesn't think he can get more naked than this, shuddering and crying a little, so overstimulated that the merest brush of tendril against his calf makes him yearn to come. The tentacle inside him grows, swells and reaches deeper; he thinks of porn holos he's seen, humanoids getting fisted by much larger sentients. He pushes back against the thing fucking him, jerking his hips, as if he wants to make it feel good.

"More," the king says.

Clutching at Finn, arm around his waist, Poe fucks forward into the tangle around his cock, then drops back, bouncing a little. He gets a gross little rhythm going, a roll of the hips here, then a spread and clinch there, and again.

"This is love?" someone asks. It could be the king, but it also sounds like Finn, when they whisper together in the dark late at night. And it sounds like Poe's own thoughts, too, and his mom's voice wishing him sweet dreams.

"Hell, yeah," Poe tries to shout. "Fuck, yeah!"

When he comes, the pleasure surging out of him is white, fluorescent, overwhelming. It drives him forward, yanks him down, pulses faster and faster until he's certain he must be flying apart. Tearing apart, right at the pores, bleeding out into light and neural flashes. All he wants is Finn, all he needs is--.

_Poe_ , says Finn's voice.

He's upright, no longer suspended, but flat-footed on smooth ground. He blinks against the sudden, pervasive dark. _Finn?_

_Stay quiet. Follow me._

It's cold and dark in here, close though he can't _see_. Hand in his, he follows Finn. _What's happening?_

_Hide here. I'll come back._

The velvety moss that wraps trees back home parts like a curtain and Poe crawls in. It's darker yet in here, but warm. He can hear a heartbeat and the echoes of voices as if through rushing water.

He sleeps, head pillowed on his arm, moss blanketing him, rocking him, swaddling him close.

*

The voices grow louder; the heartbeat persists, far more powerfully than his own. When he wakes, Poe fancies for a split second that he's inside whatever heart is beating. The moss moves with it, the water could be blood.

"...come back," Finn's saying, somewhere else, but his voice is drifting toward Poe.

"Dangerous!" Rey says, but she sounds excited.

A quieter murmur, sharper in tone but indistinct, cuts them both off.

Poe hears, then, beeping like they're near a med-bay, joined by a faster, more excited series of trills. That can't be anyone but BB-8.

"Chillax, Beeb," Poe says, opening his eyes. "Everything's copacetic, I'm here."

He sees white and panics, but it fades to something pinker and more natural, old petals, soft as wind. That's the side of Finn's palm, cupping Poe's cheek.

BB-8 shouts and whistles. Rey shushes him, then lifts him up. Poe's lying on his back in a makeshift med-bay. Finn's sitting on the gurney, holding his face, and now BB-8 is winking and whirring at him. Behind Rey is Skywalker, hunched and half-turned away; it must have been him, chiding Finn and Rey just now.

"How do you feel?" Finn asks, passing Poe some hydration gel. He smears it around Poe's chapped lips, so Poe takes the opportunity to nip down on his thumb. "Oh. You're okay."

"Did it work?" Poe asks him.

BB-8 curses and Rey laughs.

"Did what work?" Skywalker asks.

"Of course it did," Calrissian says, stepping into view, sliding his arm around Skywalker's narrow waist. "Didn't it, Finn?"

"You knew?" Finn asks Poe. His frown is tight, almost painful-looking. "You knew what I was doing?"

"No," Poe says, struggling to sit up. "But I figured you did something, 'cause you're smart like that. And here I am, safe and sound. Thank you."

"You're an idiot," Rey tells Poe and BB-8 agrees. Even Skywalker snorts in something like agreement. Finn starts to protest but Rey cuts him off. "Only an idiot would come out of a Force coma and _thank_ the guy who put him there."

Calrissian clears his throat. "I think it's romantic."

Poe points shakily at him. "What he said."

They'll explain it to him, several times, on the trip back to HQ. How Finn proved the Resistance's good intentions to the king, how he hid Poe inside the Force while short-circuiting the psi connection, how Poe slipped into him like he belonged there.

It all sounds wack to Poe, honestly, but that doesn't mean he doesn't believe them. Doesn't mean he doesn't believe in Finn, more than ever.


End file.
